Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#191

Post by collyw » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #34

yodon wrote: post #10

If your goal is to make money, don't allow yourself to write a single line of code until you have talked to people not related to you (and not close friends with you), heard at least two of them independently describe facing the same business problem, and heard both of them say "yes, that would help!" (or better "yes, I would buy that!") in response to your proposed solution. Finding a real business problem and a rea…

On the other hand, I've had a lot of success showing people proofs of concept as a way to get the conversation going about various ideas I have. Sometimes people don't know what they want/need until they actually see a pre-alpha version in action.

Indeed. Most people don't know what is possible let alone what is easy / hard to develop.

The answer to everything in my previous workplace was "another excel sheet" when we had a proper Django application with relational integrity and data validation. Showing them that a few clicks on a web form was easier than what they were used to - copy pasting data from one web page, pasting it back into an excel, reformatting it and uploading it, followed by a ton of data validation errors.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#192

Post by maxerickson » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

simonbarker87 wrote: post #185

OJFord wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central heating seems seriously overdue some innovation. Radiator's are so ugly, but what can you do? I've never known anyone have underfloor heating upstairs, though I'm not sure if there are technical reasons preventing that. It astounds me that new developments still get white steel atrocities strapped to the walls, among other things like white plastic UX-disaster thermostats.

Agreed but the UK (assuming you are UK based) made such a hash of forced air the first time around that it's unlikely to ever see much uptake. You can do electric underfloor upstairs but water is a no go upstairs unless you are concreting. The best balance is water based underfloor downstairs, underfloor electric in upstairs bathrooms + a heated towel rail (water or electric) and then water filled radiators upstairs…

Why not underfloor radiant on upper floors? This Old House tends to work high end projects, but I remembered watching this:

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/ideas/retrofitting-radiant-heat...

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#193

Post by thepratt » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #66

If you are weaker on the FE side from a project point of view keep your 'stack' really small, jQuery and Vue.js would get you a long way without really needing much front end knowledge, you can then gradually add in the other tools as you go (things like SASS/Less etc).

jQuery is no longer relevant. If using a framework it's just unnecessary bloat.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#194

Post by simonbarker87 » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

billmalarky wrote: post #190

simonbarker87 wrote: post #130

My side projects always come from personal needs, in each case I built it to solve my own problem before turning it in to a full product (summaries below). If you are going in with the sole intention of making money then make sure you know that there is a need for what you want to make and that you can get your project in front of people. You don't need to use the latest and greatest tech, in fact, I would urge you d…

you look mad friendly dude! http://www.stockcontrollerapp.com/img/simon.png

Thanks, it's the best photo of me by about 1000 times.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#195

Post by joshfraser » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

My advice to all startups is that you should spend as much time thinking about how you are going to find & acquire customers as you do on your product. The same goes for cash-flow businesses & side-projects.

One approach is to decide which customers you can find the easiest and then ask them about their problems. Start there.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#196

Post by simonbarker87 » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

dreem wrote: post #189

simonbarker87 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to the person who highlighted a typo on taptimer.com and sent in the contact form about it - no email address supplied so I'm thanking them here.

The stock controller app states "Running our of component stock" which is probably supposed to be "Running out of component stock" in the component monitoring section.

Changed. Thank you - there was me thinking I'd not got any on that site :-)

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#197

Post by rograndom » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

j_s wrote: post #101

nurettin wrote: post #30

Not sure if I should share this, as it is a trivial and obvious thing to do. Recently I created a ramen-profitable on google play with currently a couple of thousand users. The idea is to look for apps that have low ratings, high downloads and lots of recent comments, then make them better. You can use synonyms and the same niche category to increase visibility on google play. This is where the money is.

This technique also works for Wordpress plugins, and just about any other paid category with reviews. You can go into wordpress.org, just take a look at the download numbers and it will tell you flat out like whether somebody’s downloads are increasing overtime or are they decreasing, when the last updates were, all that kind of information. And you can get a sense from that information alone as to whether or not it…

You can also find WordPress plugins that have a good install base, but the author is looking for someone to adopt.

I adopted a refer spam blocker plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-referer-spam/), added some features for a paid version (https://www.blockreferspam.com/) and it's doing pretty well.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#198

Post by b_t_s » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:40 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #85

If thousands of engineers are looking for something to build that others will pay for (but can't find it), then that tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the way the economy works. Shouldn't it be the other way around? People who have a certain need express it, and engineers just pick one and work on it.

Nope. This is the realm of questionably and marginally viable products. Most experienced engineers are already working 40+ hours a week at high paying jobs, so we're talking about a the scraps of their spare time, and even that often comes with strings attached(experimental tech stacks, glacial delivery pace, etc.) Maybe add some time from marginal engineers(students, self taught no experience, overseas contractors). That's the supply. Demand often has no clue about tech, particularly custom software development, and often a very modest budget both in terms of cash and risk tolerance. That leads to two attempted solutions. The first is ODesk, which often fails and discourages further attempts. The second is entrepreneurship...engineers trying to find a problem that is solvable and felt by several hundred affected people/companies who they can actually manage to contact and sell to. This is a sales/marketing problem that most of us tend to ignore or fail at, especially those of us doing side projects where a major goal is playing with interesting tech. There's plenty of money being made in both solutions, but it's not the easy money people tend to think it is.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#199

Post by rezashirazian » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

As someone who has done countless side projects (check them out here: http://www.reza.codes) I suggest taking out "making money" as a variable and focus on things that interest you or something that stems from a personal need.

The satisfaction you get from these side projects will come from being able to finish them as opposed to try and make money from them. When you try to take on a side project with the goal of making money, you'll end up sinking way too much time in marketing and reaching out to possible customers as opposed to building something (which I find to be more fun and rewarding).

And the time you spend on trying to get people to sign up or even try your product doesn't have the same returns in satisfaction as building it. (my opinion of course)

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#200

Post by hyperliner » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 4:49 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #180

skdotdan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Maybe the way I didn't write it didn't imply it, but I actually meant that you always had to make very clear that the product doesn't exist yet. You are selling the concept of something you are or you will be working on. If after a week you have managed to do only 1 sell, then return the money, say your product didn't receive enough interest, and try something else. However, if you manage to do 1 sell, you wi…

> I actually meant that you always had to make very clear that the product doesn't exist yet. That wasn't clear to me. It looked like you were proposing the sale of a nonexistent product. If you're openly and clearly stating that it's basically a preorder, then sure, that's fine. That sounds like a tough sale, though.

It's only a fraud if you take the money and never deliver it.

If you don't take the money or deliver within the stated parameters, how is it fraud?

Many business sell product they don't have. It's a standard practice in some businesses such as when you don't take delivery of the product as a seller, or when you use someone else's inventory, etc.